The embryo freezing issue is a test for Joseph Muscat’s claim to absolute power in this country. Photo: Chris Sant FournierThe embryo freezing issue is a test for Joseph Muscat’s claim to absolute power in this country. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Everything has its peak in life and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has reached it, prematurely, one could add, considering he is only half way through his first legislature.

His declaration (because that is how he speaks today) that he is resolute on introducing embryo freezing because his position “has been known for years” is the pinnacle of arrogance.

Despots speak that way. People who are not used to being challenged think that way. Only the likes of Dom Mintoff act that way. Once you have reached this state of mind, the only way is down.

The fate of our unborn children is about to be decided on the whim of a man who has made a mockery of political ethics and values.

He has passed judgement on what constitutes right or wrong in life and death issues involving human embryos before his own ministerial committee has even come up with formal proposals.

The Prime Minister has done this before, to Mepa when it was about to discuss the new power station, and in the run-up to the spring hunting referendum. His weight influenced the outcome and now he wants to do the same.

His personal opinion on freezing embryos counts for zilch, not just because he has no mandate to do that, but because his track record, his underhand dealings, make him immensely suspect in whatever he says or does.

Muscat has made up his mind. The 2012 Embryo Protection Act is to be changed to allow embryo freezing among other things because, he declared, “any IVF law, for it to be successful, must have the function of freezing”.

Significantly, he refers to the Embryo Protection Act as an IVF law. The law as it stands limits the number of eggs that can be fertilised, generally doing away with the need for embryo freezing and the immense ethical issues and moral dilemmas that come with it.

Pro-life NGO Gift of Life said government’s own statistics show that Malta, where only eggs may be frozen, enjoys a comparable and at times better success rate for IVF treatment when compared to countries with embryo freezing. Still, Muscat wants to change the law.

Extra embryos would be frozen, he tells us, to be used by the couple later on if they want to. The embryos could also be offered up for adoption and, if the couple doesn’t like that, they could file a court application for a judge to decide. Fascinating, isn’t it, to see Muscat’s far-sighted plans on what to do with human embryos: leave it up to a judge to deal with his mess.

Serious pro-life organisations, that know what they are talking about, met Muscat’s statement with incredulity.

Embryo freezing is different because here we are talking about the lives of the unborn. The Prime Minister cannot be allowed to flippantly decide this alone

Life Network Malta chairwoman Miriam Sciberras described the proposals as bizarre. The National Council of Women said Muscat’s arbitrary way of expressing himself reflected a lack of scientific knowledge and ignored the right to life of an unborn child.

Gift of Life said Muscat’s personal opinion was unbecoming of a prime minister in a modern democracy. This organisation, whose promotion of values puts this government to shame, went even further and said human embryo freezing will be “another form of abortion”.

In his reaction, Muscat said he expressed his opinion because he believed it was a position of common sense: “If technology can help people become parents, then I’m going to stand by their side.”

In other words, he said flush your ethical issues, flush your moral values, flush away all this gibberish about human embryos containing the genetic code of a full and unique person. The end justifies the means; people will get their babies like they were consumables because that, for Muscat, constitutes common sense.

The Prime Minister said something else though, which has been overshadowed by concern for human embryos put into deep freeze. He said that gay women couples too would have access to IVF at the Mater Dei Hospital, something that is not allowed under the current law.

• The local gay movement didn’t like the Embryo Protection Act because it said it was “unashamedly homophobic”. The Malta Gay Rights Movement, which makes a habit of confusing lifestyles with human rights, said in 2012 that the “law went against basic human rights such as the right to a family”, because it was “based on the restrictive model of the family which no longer applies to today’s world”.

They were referring to the traditional family model of a male and female couple, one of the basic pillars of our society that is being undermined by Labour’s shameful policies promoting diversity (for which read gay lifestyles) even in State primary schools.

In its proposals for the current legislature, the MGRM called for the amendment of the Embryo Protection Act to allow gays equal access to reproductive health services as heterosexual couples.

They think it is a right to “form a family” and expect taxpayers to finance their lifestyle.

Clearly, Muscat’s common sense caters for this demand because his common sense demands that he caters for a portion of the electorate that got him into power. He introduced adoption rights for gays in the most disgusting, underhand way through the Civil Unions Act, so it is only natural that he now opens our State hospital doors to gay women out to form what they call a family.

Truly, this has nothing to do with couples that want to have children through “cutting edge” IVF technology, as Muscat claims. This is about gay access to State-funded IVF. But that leaves out gay men wanting to adopt children so they too may pretend to be a family. In their case, they need surrogacy.

• It was the Labour Party’s women’s section, which goes around by that repulsive name Nisa Laburisti (no contenders there if I ever was single), which in the middle of summer came out in favour of “exploring the possibility of surrogacy”.

Nothing in the modern Western world debases and exploits women more than surrogacy, and it had to be Nisa Laburisti to come out with it. With surrogacy, a child becomes a mere object of a legal transaction and a woman’s womb a simple incubator on loan.

Surrogacy violates the dignity of both mother and child and goes against a child’s right to know his origin and identity.

Most of all, it destroys the relationship between a child and its mother, who must become psychologically detached from her child during pregnancy.

Nisa Laburisti wants us to explore this option. That is the kind of thwarted thinking one is to expect from a party that has been gutted of values for votes.

There is no way that these emancipated Labour women issued that statement without the approval of their master. They were testing the ground for him, picking up from where Labour left off in 2012 when it was still in opposition and had proposed an amendment to the Embryo Protection Bill to allow surrogacy in exceptional cases.

We have learnt our lessons from the Civil Unions Bill. Labour works underhand and surrogacy may be on the cards, like gay adoption had been on the cards, even if they don’t admit it.

Civil Rights Minister Helena Dalli’s fan club, the MGRM, have already said that “while we acknowledge the serious ethical considerations with respect to surrogacy… we none the less believe that this could be a legitimate pathway to parenthood”.

Our society can put up with many of Muscat’s antics, involving ODZ development, Land Department freebies or the building of an unnecessary power station. But on this issue of embryo freezing it is different because here we are talking about the lives of the unborn.

The Prime Minister cannot be allowed to flippantly decide this alone because he just thinks so.

The embryo freezing issue is a test for Muscat’s claim to absolute power in this country. He childishly bases his arguments on common sense. But wasn’t it Albert Einstein, a far more scientific man than Muscat who said, “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18”?

Let’s hope this country, and the politicians it elected to power, are far more mature than Muscat.

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